THE 



ORAL UNIVERSE 



Rev, GEO* W. KING. Ph.D. 




Class _B ) 

Book ,_i \ U- 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 



MORAL UNIVERSE 



^M^^ 



By 

Rev. GEO. W. 'KING, Ph.D. 
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Pastor Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church 
Worcester, Mass. 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & PYE 

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THE UBRARY OF 

CONORE8S, 
Two Copies Received 

OCT. 7 1901 

COPVRKJHT ENTRY 

CLASS <XXXo. No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS, 

1901. 



TO THE PRECIOUS MEMORY OF MY 
DEAR AND SAINTED 



Jttoitjer, 



WHOSE LOVE WAS DEARER TO ME THAN LIFE, WHOSE 
PRAYERS AND SYMPATHY WERE MY UNFAILING HELP 
WHILE SHE LIVED, AND WHOSE ANGELIC PRESENCE 
AND MINISTRY, I DOUBT NOT, ARE CONSTANTLY WITH 
ME NOW THAT HER BODILY PRESENCE IS REMOVED 
FOR A TIME, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS MOST 



CONTENTS. 



Tage 

Foreword 7 

I. Righteousness God's Universal Demand 13 

II. The Necessity and Place of the Atonement 

in the Moral World 31 

III. Divine Help in Human Weakness 55 

IV. Our Finished Salvation, or the Consumma- 

tion of Life 75 

Postscript 95 

5 



FOREWORD. 



The following four sermons were preached in 
a series by the writer on successive Sunday even- 
ings during a revival in his church, the attempt 
being to set forth in popular form the plan of 
man's salvation as presented in the Scriptures, 
and, most explicitly, by the first great theologian 
of the Church, the inspired apostle, in his Epis- 
tle to the Eomans. 

It is believed, if one will read the Epistle lo 
the Romans with the aid of these sermons, he 
will the more perfectly understand the teaching 
of that comprehensive writing, and the more 
fully comprehend the only "name under heaven 
given among men, whereby we must be saved." 

We have written the sermons out in the pres- 
ent form with the hope that they may be helpful 
to pastors, evangelists, and Christian teachers 
and workers in general. 

We think they will not be profitless reading 
for the intelligent and earnest layman. 

The size of the volume is quite well suited to 
this electric age, and if the theme is "meat" for 
7 



Foreword. 

men, and not "milk" for babes, yet we have 
tried to make as readable and simple as possible 
the greatest and profoundest subject — the very 
central subject — of our religion. 

We would be gratified if the book should 
prove to be instructive reading for the hosts of 
consecrated young people in the Church, who 
certainly cannot afford to be ignorant of its far- 
reaching verities. 

For those who are looking for something that 
may be "off color" in morals or doctrine the book 
will have no interest. 

In their present form we think the truth of 
the sermons as related to each other is best 
emphasized, truth in its relations being much 
more important than truth, however valuable, 
in isolated or disconnected parts. 

It is the belief of the writer that few people 
can intelligently state the truths of the Gos- 
pel in their relations. The subject, in so far as 
it is written upon, is locked up in theological 
treatises that the people either cannot or do not 
read. The sermons are an attempt to present 
the matter in a form that the people can readily 
understand. 

The general skepticism that is prevailing in 



Foreword. 

certain quarters concerning the atonement was 
one reason for preaching the sermons, and is a 
strong reason to the writer for publishing them. 

Also, there is much that is ethical in popular 
thought that is at the same time infidel — infidel, 
perhaps, because ethical — and much that is of 
creed that is Antinomian. The true doctrine of 
the Bible is of faith, but also moral: it is an 
ethical creed, ethical in the deepest and highest 
sense, and of faith in the sense of belief in the 
great truths of life and destiny. 

The sermons undertake to exhibit this Gospel 
view of things. 

The suggestions in the volume as to the possi- 
ble help given us by departed friends, and those 
concerning the soul's imperishability, will, we 
trust, interest many, and prove reassuring in re- 
gard to both facts. 

That the righteous God of our salvation may 
bless the sermons to the profit of many is the 
sincere and earnest prayer of the author. 

G. W. K. 

Worcester, Mass., August 1, 1901. 
9 



I. 

Righteousness God's Universal 
Demand. 



"Just are the ways of God, 

And justifiable to men ; 

Unless there be who think not God at all." — Milton. 

"If this fail, 

The pillared firmament is rottenness, 

And earth's base built on stubble." — Milton. 

"God is what he is — infinite purity. He cannot 
change. If creatures are to attain the end of their 
being, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice 
is nothing but the recognition and enforcement of this 
natural necessity. Law is only the transcript of God's 
nature. Justice does not make law, it only reveals 
law. Penalty is only the reaction of God's holiness 
against that which is its opposite. Since righteousness 
and justice are only legislative and retributive holiness, 
God can cease to demand purity and to punish sin only 
when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases 
to be God."— A. H. Strong. 

"Sin is not man's misfortune, but his fault." — 
W. G. T. Shedd. 

"The denial of guilt is not the way out. He who 
takes this road 'kicks against the goads.' And he will 
find their stabs thickening, the farther he travels, and 
the nearer he draws to the face and eyes of God." — 
Shedd. 

12 



The Moral Universe. 



Righteousness God's Universal Demand* 

"Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." 
—Rev. xv, 3. 

The Eevised Version renders this verse some- 
what differently. There it reads, "Righteous 
and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages." 
And in the margin of both the Old and the 
Revised Versions is the alternate reading of "na- 
tions" instead of "saints" or "ages." 

Now, whichever reading is adopted, the same 
essential thought is expressed. "Just" and 
"righteous" express the same idea, and God is 
King of "saints," King of the "ages," King of 
"nations," and as King of "saints," of the 
"ages," and of "nations" he is, has been, and 
must be "righteous." 

Implied in these words is the other idea, that 
God demands righteousness of all his intelligent 
moral subjects. He is righteous, therefore we 
must be righteous. This a righteous God must 
require of us. 

I wish to inquire to-night what righteousness 
13 



The Moral Universe. 

means in God and man, notice God's universal 
demand of righteousness, and observe the neces- 
sity of this demand. 



I. — What Eighteousness Means. 

1. Eighteousness means uprightness, truth, 
justice, integrity, fidelity. There is no crooked- 
ness, deceit, injustice, treachery in God, and 
righteousness is the same in us. 

The words I have just used express the funda- 
mental idea of righteousness, and explain them- 
selves. This is the first idea we get from the 
word "righteousness/' and also from the words 
of the Old and New Testaments translated 
"righteousness." 

The etymology of the English word probably 
signifies "wise as to that which is right." 

The Hebrew and Greek words translated 
righteousness signify substantially the same 
idea. 

2. Eighteousness, further, is purity, clean- 
ness of thought and life. 

A righteous life is not unclean either inside or 

out. God does not know impurity, and righteous 
14 



The Moral Universe. 

men are free from it. Even the thoughts of a 
righteous man are clean. 

3. Another element of righteousness is love. 

"God is love" and "Our God is a consuming 
fire" are two sides of the same truth. Because 
God is love he is a consuming fire. 

Love is not a mere sentiment without 
strength : God is not a weakling. Love is right 
and right is love. Love has righteousness in it 
and must he righteous, and righteousness has 
love in it and must love. 

Love, moreover, is a righteous duty of all men 
to all others. It is one of the commandments. 
"Thou shalt love" "both God and man is the 
word of Scripture. He who does not love is not 
righteous, and he who is righteous will love. 

So important is love as an element of a right- 
eous life that upon it hang "all the law" — nat- 
ural and revealed — and all the moral teaching 
and denunciations of "the prophets." It is the 
"fulfilling of the law,"the greatest gift, and the 
crowning grace of nature and religion. Without 
it we are "nothing." 

If this grace is marred or defective in one par- 
ticular, we are not complete in righteousness. 
If jealousy, anger, malice, envy, impatience, un- 
15 



The Moral Universe. 

kindness, pride, or any other unholy spirit pos- 
sess us for a moment, our righteousness of love 
is therein seen to be incomplete, and we thereby 
fall short "of the glory of God," who is himself 
"love," who tells us to "love one another" and to 
love our neighbor as ourselves. 

Our love must be complete, not only man- 
ward, but Godward. No less a requirement is 
laid upon us than that we should love our Maker 
with the whole circle of our nature — "with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy strength, and with all thy mind" — and not 
with a segment of it. 

We are to love our "enemies" also, "pray" for 
them, "bless" them. 

Some things, according to our standard of 
righteousness, we are not to love. "Love not the 
world, neither the things that are in the world 
(the world of the sinful, and absorption, to the 
exclusion of heavenly ideals and pursuits, by the 
world that is not sinful, but legitimate). If 
any man love the world, the love of the Father 
is not in him. For all that is in the world, the 
lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the 
pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the 
world." 

16 



The Moral Universe. 

4. A very important thought in the idea of 
righteousness is that of strict obedience to the 
laws of God. 

A righteous man, in the Bible sense of the 
word, is a man who keeps God's requirements. 
To "fear God and keep his commandments" is 
to be righteous. 

5. Eighteousness has to do with the motives 
of the life and acts. 

The inner and heart life is not overlooked. 
"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
are the issues of life," is not only the counsel of 
prudence, but the requirement of God's law. 

Christ said a "look" might be sin, and John 
says to "hate" is to be a murderer. 

6. To be "innocent," to be "holy," is to be 
righteous. 

These words are synonymous, expressing 
phases of the general thought of the more com- 
prehensive word of my subject. 

7. Other words that express phases of the 
same general thought are "virtuous," "fault- 
less," "guiltless," dutiful," "sincere." 

8. Eighteousness pertains to the whole man, 
body, mind, and spirit. 

The Bible calls the body the "temple of the 
(2) 17 



The Moral Universe. 

Holy Ghost" and says, "If any man defile the 
temple of God, him shall God destroy." 

Sin in the Scriptures is very much associated 
with the "flesh." The mind that is at "enmity 
against God" is the "carnal" mind. It is the 
"flesh" that "lusteth against the spirit." If we 
"sow to the flesh" we "reap corruption." 

And who does not know the power of the flesh 
in temptation as well as of the world and the 
devil? Like Paul we must keep our bodies 
under ("buffet" them), if we would be righteous 
according to divine requirements. 

"A sound mind in a sound body" is an old an- 
nouncement of a law of the mental nature, and 
a "sound mind" — with pure and strong think- 
ing — and a pure spirit are mutually congenial. 

9. God's standard of right makes us respon- 
sible for our example. 

We are to "abstain from all appearance of 
evil," and the highest Christian consecration 
says, "If meat make my brother to offend 
[stumble], I will eat no flesh while the world 
standeth." 

The highest moral consciousness approves the 
same standard. 

10. God's standard takes note of our words. 

18 



The Moral Universe. 

"But I say unto you, That every idle word 
that men shall speak, they shall give account 
thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy 
words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words 
thou shalt be condemned." "Whosoever shall 
say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." 

As words are the transcript of our thoughts, 
so they are of the spirit and character. This is, 
no doubt, the reason why they are so much ac- 
counted of according to the law of right. 

To be righteous, according to God's require- 
ments, is to be wholly righteous — to be abso- 
lutely spotless in regard to all right and all 
points in righteousness. 

Says St. James: "For whosoever shall keep 
the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is 
guilty of all" — he has broken the law of God, 
and, like a broken vase, it is rendered valueless 
so far as his observance of it is concerned. 

Sin may be in the feelings where there is no 
particular motive involved, and also in our 
stumblings as well as in our voluntary trans- 
gressions. 

Yes, even to neglect any law of God or duty is 
to sin. "To him that knoweth to do good, and 
doeth it not, to him it is sin." 
19 



The Moral Universe. 

These things are not only matters of explicit 
revelation, but axiomatic in moral consciousness. 
The consciences of all men, no matter what their 
moral conduct or attempt at self -palliation, will 
upon interrogation, if not otherwise, approve 
them. 

II. — Let us look now at God's universal de- 
mand of righteousness. 

1. He demands it of the heathen as well as of 
those who have the light of revelation. 

When Peter went to Cornelius through the 
persuasion of God in the vision at Joppa, 
whereby the Jewish prejudice of the apostle 
against the Gentiles was broken down, he ex- 
claimed, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no 
respecter of persons : but in every nation he that 
feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is ac- 
cepted with him." 

And surely only such are "accepted with 
him." So that if an African in the heart of 
Africa works righteousness, he is accepted, and 
if an American in the heart of civilization does 
not work righteousness, he is not and cannot be 
accepted. 

20 



The Moral Universe. 

God demands righteousness of all alike, im- 
partially. 

2. He demands righteousness of angels as 
well as of men. 

Therefore, when the angels fell they were cast 
out of heaven. 

There are two sources of evidence as to this 
universal demand, the Scriptures and con- 
science. 

The light of revelation is larger than the light 
of nature, but conscience, according to its light, 
demands the right of all men. Hence when we 
do wrong it makes "cowards of us all," and when 
we are guilty "every noise affrights" us. 

If they should sin, God said of his ancient 
people : "I will send a f aintness into their hearts 
in the land of their enemies ; and the sound of a 
shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall 
flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall 
fall when none pursueth." 

Paul says: "For when the Gentiles, which 
have not the law, do by nature the things con- 
tained in the law, these, having not the law, are 
a law unto themselves : which show the work of 
the law written in their hearts, their conscience 
also bearing witness [witnessing with them], 
21 



The Moral Universe. 

and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or 
else excusing one another." 

Conscience is the soul's "moral imperative/' 

The Scriptures everywhere speak of righteous- 
ness as God's unwavering demand upon all. 

By this standard all men are approved or con- 
demned ; by it all character, all acts, all thoughts 
are weighed and accepted, or found wanting. 

When even a David sins he is pilloried for all 
time before the world in the sacred pages as 
under the condemnation of the Almighty. 
"Thou art the man" is the divine sentence which 
forever fixes the double guilt of adultery and 
murder upon the name of the man "after God's 
own heart." 

God does not and cannot spare any man, not 
even his chosen ones. The Bible never conceals 
or condones guilt. It looks upon sin only with 
condemnation, and in the judgment men will 
be approved or condemned according to their 
works. The unclean, unrighteous, unholy will 
go into hell; the clean, the righteous, the holy 
will go into heaven. 

This is everywhere the word of God. "Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
"For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whore- 
22 



The Moral Universe.. 

mongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and 
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." 

Moral ideas and obligations are not footballs 
with which the children of the world merely; 
play in a game of life. They represent realities 
that affect far more deeply the interests of our 
well-being in life and destiny. 

III. — Notice, now, the necessity of God's uni- 
versal demand of righteousness. 

1. The government of the universe rests upon 
it. 

"Righteousness and judgment are the habita- 
tion [the Revised Version says, "foundation"]; 
of thy throne." 

Just so ; if God were not righteous and did not 
demand righteousness of all intelligences, the 
throne of the universe would fall, and chaos 
would reign among moral beings everywhere. 

The uninspired conjecture that the angels fell 
through an unholy ambition which revolted 
against the authority of God finds its inspiration 
in the human consciousness that such sin must 
have been cast out of heaven. The only biblical 
confirmation of the conjecture is an inference 
23 



The Moeal Univekse. 

from the warning concerning a New Testament 
"bishop" or overseer: "Not a novice, lest being 
lifted up with pride [puffed up] he fall into the 
condemnation of the devil." 

But whatever the particular form of the sin 
of these angels "which kept not their first es- 
tate/' it was rebellion against God, and so was 
cast out. God could not "spare" even the angels 
when they "sinned." So his word says ; that is, 
it says he did not, and we know if he did not he 
could not. 

2. It is the foundation of all human govern- 
ment and society. 

The throne of God is back of the governments 
of men. Without righteousness human society 
would fall into anarchy. Unless rulers, judges, 
and all the people observed the laws of right- 
eousness, society would be nothing but a band 
of robbers preying upon themselves, and society 
is good and strong just in proportion as men 
obey these laws. 

God must demand righteousness for the ends 
of human fellowship. 

History is full of the story of nations that 
have fallen through sin. 

The mighty Roman empire fell to pieces, like 
24 



The Moral Universe. 

a moth-eaten garment, at the approach of the 
barbarian because the Roman empire was rotten 
in sin. 

On the other hand, righteousness has always 
exalted the nation that practiced it. Indeed, 
no nation ever grew to importance without 
righteousness, and the same nation has fallen 
when it forgot the laws of right written in the 
conscience or in revelation. 

Righteousness is the best protector of any 
people. Plautus, the Roman, has said : "If the 
inhabitants have good morals I think the city 
is properly fortified, but if vices prevail there 
a hundred walls would be of no avail for pre- 
serving its interests." 

Good morals have always been better than 
walls or armies in a people's defense, and the 
soldiers of a nation strong in virtue are invin- 
cible. The old story is that an ambassador vis- 
iting Sparta from Epirus was surprised not to 
find the towns of the former country defended 
by walls, and asked the reason. "Indeed/' said 
the king, thou canst not have looked carefully. 
Come with me to-morrow morning and I will 
show you the walls of Sparta." The next morn- 
ing the king led his guest out upon the plains 
25 



The Moral Universe. 

where his army was drawn up in full array, and 
pointing with pride to his men he exclaimed, 
"Thou beholdest the walls of Sparta — ten thou- 
sand men, and every man a brick !" 

"And every man a brick !" Virtuous men are 
"bricks" in the defense of any nation's life. 

"How should one chase a thousand, and two 
put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had 
sold them, and the Lord had shut them up?" 
suggests not only providential weakness, but 
providential weakness through the weakness of 
sin. 

3. Eighteousness is the foundation of all hap- 
piness; of all that is beautiful and good in the 
life of moral beings. 

Sin kills and destroys. It blights every beau- 
tiful flower, and turns any life into a waste 
wilderness. 

It ruins not only the sinner, but his asso- 
ciate. 

Thence God must demand righteousness. 

4. It is the foundation of heaven. 

Hence the unrighteous are to be excluded 
from that perfect society. Should the unright- 
eous be admitted there heaven would be no bet- 
ter than our earthly home. 
26 



The Moral Universe. 

Can any man, then, be saved through his own 
life ? through his own righteousness ? 

Two men, recently, are dying, both of the 
same disease; both take the same medicine to 
deaden the terrible pain. One of them is not a 
Christian, although a man respected by his 
neighbors, said to be a "nice" man, and outward- 
ly moral. He never accepts and owns Christ as 
his Saviour, and in dying exclaims, to the fear- 
ful alarm and terror of his family, "I'm going 
to hell ! I'm going to hell !" 

What did that bitter cry mean ? 

The other man is a Christian. He calls all 
the members of his family about him, has a 
word for all, asks, "What word shall I take to 
Jesus for you ?" and dies in victory. 

What was the difference between the two ? 

Remembering God's unfailing demand of 
righteousness of all, are you willing to die with 
nothing but your own record to bring before the 
judgment seat of the Almighty ? 

"There is a death, whose pang 

Outlasts the fleeting breath : 
O, what eternal horrors hang 

Around the second death!" 

27 



II. 

The Necessity and Place of the Atone- 
ment in the Moral World. 



"Say first, of God above or man below, 

What can we reason but from what we know?" — Pope. 

"How charming is divine philosophy ! 

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 

But musical as is Apollo's lute, 

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets 

Where no crude surfeit reigns." — Milton. 

"As the design of the incarnation of the Son of God 
was to reconcile us unto God, and as reconciliation of 
parties at variance is a work of mediation, Christ is 
called our Mediator." — Charles Hodge. 

"Any theory of atonement embodying enough truth 
to be really a theory must take special account of divine 
justice." — Miley. 

"The thing that has to be dealt with, that has to 
be overcome, in the work of reconciliation is not man's 
distrust of God, but God's condemnation of man." — 
James Denney. 

30 



The Moral Universe. 



II. 

The Necessity and Place of the Atonement 
in the Moral World. 

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of 
God."— Rom. iii, 23. 

I undertook to show in the last sermon what 
righteousness is, its universal demand upon in- 
telligent beings, and the necessity of this de- 
mand in the moral world ; that the throne of the 
universe is founded upon it, and, also, the gov- 
ernments of men, and human happiness, and, 
as well, everything that is beautiful and good 
and worthy in life; in fact, that righteousness 
is the backbone of the universe. 

To-night I wish to show the necessity and 
place of atonement in this moral world where 
righteousness is so universally demanded and 
imperative. 

1. I need take only a moment to define the 
atonement. 

The word "atonement" signifies at-one-ment 
with God through the sufferings and death of 
31 



The Moral Universe. 

Christ, or a state of being "at one" with him, or 
at peace with him. 

Other words that are used in the Scriptures 
to denote the work of Christ for us have the 
same general signification. 

Such, for example, is the word "reconcilia- 
tion." We are reconciled to God through our 
Saviour. 

Another word is "redemption." Redemption 
means to be bought back, as from slavery or 
death. So, according to the Scriptures, we are 
bought back from the slavery and death of sin 
through the blood of Christ, our Ransom. 

Another word is "propitiation." Christ is 
the propitiation, or mercy seat where we find 
acceptance with God in the forgiveness of our 
sins. God becomes propitious or favorable to us 
through his Son. 

A sinful being could not make the atonement, 
for he would himself need an atonement; but 
Christ was sinless. 

A human being could not make it, for human 
beings are sinful ; but Christ was divine. 

In the nature of the case an atonement must 
be voluntary, and Christ freely gave himself, as 
well as was given by the Father. 
32 



The Moral Universe. 

He was well fitted in all respects to bring to 
us redemption. 

2. The necessity of the atonement is in the 
fact of universal sinfulness. 

The text declares : "All have sinned." 

This is the constant voice of the Scriptures. 

"That every mouth may be stopped [in denial 
of guilt], and all the world become guilty before 
God/' they further say is an object of the divine 
law. 

Human history, observation, and conscious- 
ness confirm the word of God. 

Is there one who has never sinned ? Is there 
one whose moral consciousness is without con- 
demnation? 

"No, not one." 

Remember, there are other sins besides the 
sins of the prodigal. 

Wasting one's substance in riotous living is 
not the only crime against God. All sin is crime. 
There are respectable sins, or sins that are not 
looked upon by men as being as heinous as the 
more open and grosser sins, but God looks upon 
all sins alike. There are sins of thought, and 
deception, and injustice, and neglect that are 
fully as bad, from the standpoint of the require- 
(3) 33 



The Moral Universe. 

ments of righteousness, as lying, or stealing, or 
swearing, or adultery, or murder. 

"There is no difference," the apostle declares ; 
"all have sinned," and all stand equally guilty 
before the requirements of the moral world. 

Guilt is guilt, no matter what the particular 
manner or occasion of it is, or the particular 
form or substance of it. Sin is sin, and as we 
have all sinned we are all guilty. 

This universal guilt among human beings 
makes necessary some means whereby we can be 
forgiven, if we are not to suffer the just retribu- 
tion of our guilt. 

3. We are now led to say, the place of atone- 
ment is to meet a moral demand in the govern- 
ment of the universe. 

Let us see. 'A man commits a crime against 
human society: what is the consequence? He 
must be punished for it. The interests of hu- 
man society demand it. 

If crime should be let go free, or without pun- 
ishment, human society would soon reach dis- 
integration. Crime must be punished in order 
that the good in society may be protected. And 
so crime is punished. 

We punish the criminal, not so much for his 
34 



The Mobal Universe. 

own sake, although we may have in mind his 
reformation while he is being punished, hut for 
the sake of the society in which he lives and 
against which he has sinned. 

So, likewise, a man commits a crime against 
the intelligent society of the world, against the 
government of God among intelligent moral 
beings (and all sin is such crime) : what is to 
he done ? 

Shall his crime go unpunished ? If so, such a 
course would soon result in the disintegration 
of the moral world. 

He must he punished. 

But the punishment of crime in the moral 
world is eternal death. Sin has eternal guilt, 
and eternal punishment is the necessary penalty 
in the government of the moral universe. 

Therefore, all men as sinners must suffer 
eternal wrath, or some divine plan must be pro- 
vided whereby God can be "just" and, at the 
same time, the "justifler" of the guilty. 

God has proposed such a plan in his Son. 

The story of Bronson Alcott, while an old one, 
is as good a human illustration of a divine fact 
as can be found. 

This school-teacher conceived the idea of 
35 



The Moral Universe. 

keeping order in his school, not by inflicting 
punishment upon the offending pupils, but by 
receiving the stripes himself from the hand of 
the guilty ones. The child who had violated 
the order of the school was compelled to inflict 
blows upon the teacher. 

This discipline had a very beneficial effect 
upon the offender and the school, and, while 
painful to the teacher, accomplished the end de- 
sired and necessary — good order in the school. 

So, in some such way, "the chastisement of 
our peace was upon him, and with his stripes 
we are healed." 

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world 
unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto 
them." 

He stood in our place and suffered for us that 
we might be saved from the just punishment of 
our eternal guilt for sin, and that the necessary 
righteous demands of the moral world might not 
be ignored. 

Looking at Christ, neither angel, archangel, 
nor human being can say God cares not for 
righteousness, or the demands of righteousness 
for the happiness and welfare of moral intelli- 
gences. All, all must say sin is crime, sin must 
36 



The Moeal Universe. 

be punished, but God is merciful and can for- 
give eternal guilt and yet uphold the throne of 
the world. 

The atonement is God's solution of this mer- 
ciful problem of the moral world. God is right- 
eous, man is guilty; God is merciful, God for- 
gives, his laws are honored, and will finally be 
perfectly obeyed by all saved and glorified, but 
now sinning, souls. 

" 'Tis mystery all ! the Immortal dies ! 

Who can explore his strange design? 
In vain the firstborn seraph tries 

To sound the depths of love divine ; 
'Tis mercy all ! let earth adore : 
Let angel minds inquire no more." 

In theological terminology the doctrine here 
announced is known as the "governmental" 
view. 

It seems destined to be man's final answer to 
the mystery of the cross, as it seems also to be 
the inspired answer. 

These words of Paul are profound, far-reach- 
ing, and conclusive : "Whom God hath set forth 
to be a propitiatiou through faith in his blood, 
to declare his righteousness for the remission of 
sins that are past, through the forbearance of 
37 



The Moral Universe. 

God ; to declare, I say, at this time his righteous- 
ness : that he might be just, and the justifier of 
him which believeth in Jesus." 

The older philosophy that taught that Christ 
was a sacrifice to the devil in order that God 
might justly deliver men from him to whom 
they had sold themselves by sin, and the doctrine 
that God's personal wrath needed atonement, 
are alike superficial. 

So, also, is the modern view that Christ satis- 
fied only a moral demand of love and example. 

No ! no ! the atonement of "our great God and 
Saviour Jesus Christ" is deeper than either. Its 
necessity finds its answer only in the moral re- 
lations of God and his moral subjects, in the 
eternal ties that bind moral intelligences to- 
gether in a moral universe. 

Let it be observed, moreover, that this neces- 
sity is not arbitrary or artificial. It is founded 
in the deepest necessity of the nature of divine 
and human moral relations. The necessities of 
human society are not arbitrary; nor are those 
of the divine society. Governmental laws, hu- 
man and divine, are built upon the laws of moral 
nature in God and man. 

I am standing upon the ocean's beach" and 
38 



The Moral Universe. 

look upon the sweep and sway of the boundless 
sea before me and the boundless blue above me, 
and at my feet are the trillions of grains of sand 
that make "the wondrous strand." In the dis- 
tance is a sea bird, sailing as easily in its native 
air as a fish swims in the sea. With a radiance 
that I dare not look upon, the sun shines from 
his distant place in the heavens, giving light and 
warmth to all below. 

All these are governed by law, as is all of 
nature. We call it natural law. No less are 
moral beings governed by natural law in the 
government of the heavenly Father and Judge. 
As natural law binds the planets and stars to- 
gether in space by immutable decrees, so the 
moral laws of the universe bind moral indi- 
viduals into a social whole by ties as imperative 
and eternal. Neither God nor man can ignore 
them, once they are established, unless he who 
made them annihilate the moral world, as he 
might the physical world. 

Look at our theme from another illustrative 
viewpoint, and consider for a moment the nat- 
ural laws of the family. 

These laws are not simply physical — the re- 
lation, in the space called home, of two, five, or 
39 



The Moral Universe. 

eight physical beings under the influence of the 
law of gravitation and other physical laws — but 
mental and moral. 

In all well-regulated homes there must be 
authority, governed, tempered, and guided by 
love. 

But the laws of a good home must be obeyed, 
or there can be no good home. 

The more thoroughly the laws of a happy 
home are known and observed in all matters the 
better for all the members of that home. 

But the remark applies not more to the phys- 
ical laws than to the mental and moral. The 
one are not more natural than the other, nor 
may the latter be ignored with impunity more 
readily than the former. The laws of mind and 
spirit in their mutual relations are as binding 
as are physical laws. 

The moral laws of society and of the govern- 
ment of God are as binding as are the laws of the 
home. 

Theology is man's broken vision of God, but 
the light that comes from him is a true ligfrE, 
and our vision is true as far as it goes. 

While we may not find God out to perfection, 
yet from our moral nature and relations we may 
40 



The Mokal Universe. 

know the necessities of moral society, and it is 
impossible rationally to think the atonement of 
the Son of God did not meet a necessary demand 
in this moral world. 

There is no need to assume any less or any 
greater demand, and whatever other functions 
that atonement served they are not the most 
fundamental, and must be thought of as inci- 
dental to the main work accomplished. Christ 
serves in his sacrifice as a stimulating example 
of all heroic self-sacrifice and love, and the per- 
sonal wrath of God is satisfied in the satisfaction 
of his governmental wrath ; but the main neces- 
sity met in our Saviour was his harmonious ad- 
justment of moral relations in a world of vio- 
lated moral obligations. 

4. Our forgiveness in Christ is given to us 
conditionally. 

God forgives us in Christ, but on conditions. 

This is part of his plan, and it is not to be 
supposed he can forgive us otherwise. 

These are the conditions : First, if we repent 
of our sins, and, through faith, accept Christ 
as our atonement or reconciliation with God. 

God offers forgiveness through Christ, he does 
not force it upon us. We must repent, we must 
41 



The Moral Universe. 

accept and trust Christ for salvation from our 
sins. 

Why the heavenly King makes faith the con- 
necting link between his mercy and the restora- 
tion of sinning and sinful men may be, on our 
part, matter of conjecture. 

That he does cannot be gainsaid. Of Abra- 
ham it is said : "And he believed in the Lord ; 
and he counted it to him for righteousness." In 
the New Testament we read : "Theref ore being 
justified [forgiven] by faith, we have peace with 
God." And the just arid righteous 'live by 
faith." 

While our answer may not readily be given 
as to the reason, yet there is that in the nature 
of faith which suggests a reason. Faith is a 
natural quality of the soul and is the uplooking, 
receiving, constructive, trusting state of the 
mind, as well as the "substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen." 

It is not conceivable that any good can come 
to man without the exercise of this faculty. To 
undertake to live without it is to demonstrate 
its radical place in life, attainment, and achieve- 
ment. It is an element in every venture and 
adventure, in every discovery and invention. It 
42 



The Moral Universe. 

makes the warrior brave, the sick man patient, 
the toiler enduring. It anticipates the future, 
dispels the gloom of the grave, and gilds the en- 
trance of the home immortal. 

"Faith looks to things unseen; 

It penetrates the darkest night 
Of mystery, and e'en 

That darkness is as light." 

Now, such a faculty could not be left out in 
the soul's redemption, and it seems the only 
faculty fitted like a hand to lay hold of divine 
mercy and power. Like the trolley, it lays hold 
of power, and conveys to us that energy that is 
begotten in the Dynamo of the universe. 

Moreover, when love is cold faith may be ex- 
ercised and make our love to glow with a new 
fire ; when hope is dim faith cheers it ; when the 
conscience is full of guilt faith is able to "lay 
hold upon the hope set before us." 

It is a faculty of the entire soul. It believes 
as a power of the mind upon suitable evidence, it 
trusts as an act of the sensibilities and the will. 

It has been called "a sixth sense." 

As an attitude of the mind toward God in 
which he can give to us the benefits of redemp- 
tion, it can claim no merit, and makes a medium 
43 



The Moral Universe. 

for the flow of divine mercy and grace that offers 
no impediment. 

Surely, God selected the right means of access 
to the souls of sinful beings for their salvation, 
and his wisdom as well as his grace is mani- 
fested in his plan of mercy through faith. 

It is not genius, or talent, or learning that 
saves us, hut faith. It may he found with 
genius and learning, but itself is neither; and 
he who believes can be saved though he be a 
stranger to both. 

We must not fail to distinguish between faith 
as a principle, as a "sense" of the soul, as an act 
of uplooking and receiving, and faith as a creed. 

Faith as a creed is dependent very much upon 
classified knowledge. In this sense it is and 
must be a growth. 

Moreover, in this sense every man must make 
his own faith for himself, with whatever help 
he can get from the multiplied sources of Chris- 
tian instruction. A creed cannot be crowded 
down a man's throat as certain domestic fowls 
are stuffed for fatting before the day of slaugh- 
ter. A creed must be imbibed and become part 
of one's nature and life. It must be assimilated. 
Being so formed, it will be subject to variations 
44 



The Moral Universe. 

and modifications and additions and substrac- 
tions. 

Faith as an elemental principle of the nature 
and life, on the contrary, is not learned; it is 
instinctive, it is original, it is an eye of the soul 
with which everyone is born. 

Faith as a creed is not to be despised and 
neglected. 

Every intelligent man should seek by every 
means within his reach to form for himself as 
sensible a creed as it is possible for him to arrive 
at, and he should not ignore the creed of the 
Church while he thinks for himself. Nor should 
he forget that a "right spirit," and a clean life, 
and a saving faith, and a disposition to follow 
the light have much to do with the formation 
of a right creed. It was long ago said: "The 
heart's devotion makes the theologian," and still 
longer ago by the Master : "If any man will do 
his will [willeth to do his will] he shall know." 

No truly Christian creed can be formed that 
is not unobstructed by moral impediments. 

The aid of faith both as a principle whereby 
we "lay hold on eternal life" and as a creed, that 
is given in the Holy Spirit is not to be over- 
looked. Our natural faith is so helped, and "no 
45 



The Moral Universe. 

man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the 
Holy Ghost." 

May the Holy Spirit help our believing and 
trusting faith to "grasp the God we seek" in 
salvation in his dear Son and our Saviour ! 

It is definitive — persistent and final — unbe- 
lief that destroys us. The soul that shuts itself 
to the light and love of God cannot be saved. 

The soul that refuses to accept salvation on 
God's terms cannot be saved. 

Christ is "the author and finisher of our 
faith/' and we have no business to change this 
"faith" in either its moral or doctrinal require- 
ments. We must "run the race set before us" 
according to the laws of life and salvation in- 
stituted by the Founder of our faith. 

As in the Greek stadium (the word itself 
meaning something "fixed") the racer kept the 
rules of the race, so must we run our race as 
Christ has ordained it for us. 

Second, for forgiveness we must repent and 
believe in life or during life. 

There is no indication in the Scriptures that, 

if a man dies without repentance and faith in 

Christ, he can ever thereafter be forgiven, even 

through the atonement. Death ends all the 

46 



The Moral Universe. 

chances of sinning men of being saved through 
the crucified Saviour. Death ends probation. 

This is the constant word of the Bible. "Now" 
is the day of salvation, "now," in time and be- 
fore death. 

Third, we must amend our lives. 

Forgiveness is no license to sin. "Do we then 
make void the law through faith ? God forbid ; 
yea, we establish the law." 

The law stands under grace as well as outside 
of grace, even more so. "We establish the law." 
Sinai means more in the light of Calvary than 
without it; Moses, more in the light of Christ 
than without him; condemnation, more in the 
light of redemption than without it. 

Forgiveness is not license to sin, but greater 
reason for righteousness. "Shall we continue in 
sin, that grace may abound ? God forbid. How 
shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer 
therein?" 

He who sins is not forgiven, and he who is 
forgiven does not sin. This is a condition of his 
forgiveness. 

The story of Jack, the deaf-mute, is interest- 
ing and illustrates, in his own rather crude way, 
the biblical conception of redemption in Christ. 
47 



The Moral Universe. 

This was his idea. He said he had died and 
lain in the grave a long time. God called to 
him to come out of the grave and stand before 
him for judgment. God took a book, which 
Jack called the Bible book, and opened it, in 
which, he said, all his "bads" were written. God 
looked at it and could see "nothing" against 
Jack. 

When the poor fellow was telling this concep- 
tion of divine things to his teacher he was asked 
in much surprise, "Why, Jack, do you mean to 
say you have done no wrong ?" 

"0 no !" replied the simple-hearted Christian, 
"I do not mean that. This is how it is : The 
reason God could see no 'bads' against me was 
because Jesus took something out of the wound 
in his hand made by the nail on the cross, and 
let the blood flow again, and then he drew his 
bloody hand over the page where my 'bads' were 
written, and so when God looked he could see no 
'bads,' but only the blood of Jesus." 

Then, when God could see no "bads" against 
Jack, Jesus came and put his great arms of love 
around him and drew him aside, and, after 
others were judged, Jack, with all the saved, 
went, with Jesus, into heaven. 
48 



The Moral Universe. 

This was the mute's crude conception of the 
redemption of Christ, but the idea is thoroughly 
Christian. The blood covers our sins, we are 
forgiven for Christ's sake, in him we are saved, 
and he is our Door into heaven. 

"By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, 
and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture." 

"Jesus, thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress ; 
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, 
With joy shall I lift up my head." 

The above is undoubtedly the plan of salva- 
tion presented to us in the Scriptures. The plan 
is not without difficulty for human thought. 

The first difficulty pertains to the guilt of sin. 
Has the guilt of temporal sin eternal demerit? 
That it might have eternal consequences none 
will, perhaps, be disposed to deny. But when it 
is remembered that guilt is a rectoral condition, 
and that eternal punishment is a natural conse- 
quence of moral relations, or, it might be better 
said, a natural necessity of moral relations, the 
fact of eternal guilt and punishment does not 
seem impossible even to rational thought; and 
if the authority of the Scriptures is to be re- 
garded the fact is certain. 
(4) 49 



The Moral Universe. 

Another difficulty is a moral one. Can sin be 
forgiven outright, the sinner not suffering the 
natural consequences or penalty of his sin, with- 
out jeopardy to his own moral discipline ? 

The Antinomian danger at this point, we ad- 
mit, is very great. 

It must be remembered, however, that not all 
the consequences of sin are avoided even in the 
atonement. We suffer somewhat for our sins 
even though forgiven. 

David was forgiven for his sin against Uriah, 
but Nathan said to him: "Now therefore the 
sword shall not depart from thine house; be- 
cause thou hast despised me, and hast taken the 
wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife." He 
also said : "The Lord also hath put away thy sin ; 
thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this 
deed thou hast given great occasion to the 
enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also 
that is born unto thee shall surely die." And 
the fasting, weeping, and earnest prayers of 
David could not change the decree, and the 
child died. 

The sword, moreover, did not depart from his 
House. 

Through Christ the eternal demerit of our 
50 



The Moral Universe. 

sins is remitted, but we do not go entirely free. 
We are "chastised" for our sins even though we 
are forgiven. 

Let no one, therefore, think he can sin with 
impunity because he has a Saviour. 

Besides, as shown before, our forgiveness is 
conditional upon right living. 

Who will say an atonement with these pro- 
visions and safeguards inculcates indifference to 
righteous living? He who so asserts does so 
without understanding either the atonement or 
the laws of the moral world even under the 
terms of divine mercy. 

The theistic and metaphysical difficulties of 
the incarnation are common to all the articles 
of our historic creed, and not peculiar to the 
present doctrine. The Trinity is not only a 
possibility, but a probability, and the incarna- 
tion a fitting and possible climax to the ascent of 
humanity in its evolution Godward. In the 
human Christ mankind had reached a stage in 
development where the Son of God could be- 
come, "flesh" and dwell "among us" as Im- 
manuel or Theanthropos. When Christ came 
"the fullness of time" had come not only his- 
torically, but evolutionally. 
51 



III. 

Divine Help in Human Weakness. 



"I held it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

"But who shall so forecast the years 
And find in loss a gain to match? 
Or reach a hand through time to catch 

The far-off interest of tears?" — Tennyson. 

"The development of the new life in the soul, from 
its first unseen beginnings, onward to its perfected 
state in bliss, embraces a multitude of human circum- 
stances, and holy influences of the Spirit ; and presents 
an inexhaustible mine of study in the departments of 
ethics and moral psychology." — Martensen. 

"As the goal of sanctification is a perfection of moral 
goodness which shall forever exclude the possibility of 
evil, and yet be the outgo of the highest freedom, so the 
development of evil ends in a state wherein unwilling- 
ness to goodness has ripened into inability, wherein 
personality, persisting in alienation from God, has be- 
come absolutely petrified in sin." — Julius Miiller. 
54 



The Moral Universe. 

EL 
Divine Help in Human Weakness. 

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him 
up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely 
give us all things?" — Rom. viii, 32. 

In the foregoing sermons I have shown that 
God is righteous and must demand righteous- 
ness of all moral intelligences; that all have 
morally failed, or sinned, and come short of the 
necessary demands of righteousness, and are 
therefore guilty of death; that the eternal pen- 
alty of sin is due to all, because all have sinned, 
and that the atonement is God's plan in the 
moral world whereby he can uphold his throne 
and all intelligent, moral society, and yet for- 
give those who have violated his demands of 
righteousness. 

For all who repent of their sins, accept, by 
faith, Christ as their Redeemer, and intend to 
live a new or righteous life, God can and does 
grant this forgiveness, and can be and is at the 
same time a righteous moral Ruler, upholding 
the laws of the moral world and the laws of a 
55 



The Moral Universe. 

happy and blessed society among finite, intelli- 
gent, moral beings — angelic and human. 

The atonement, then, is God's way of forgive- 
ness. 

But we need more than forgiveness : we need 
help in our weakness, and I wish to speak to- 
night of this human weakness and the divine 
help that is given to us, whereby we may be 
righteous and live righteously in "this present 
evil world." 

1. We have a sinful nature, and need power to 
overcome it. 

If you will read the seventh chapter of the 
Epistle to the Eomans you will there find this 
moral struggle portrayed by an apostle's hand. 

There Paul tells us, and he tells us what all 
feel, that in human nature — awakened human 
nature, human nature wanting to do right — 
there are two conflicting dispositions, one to- 
ward the right and one toward the wrong. The 
law of the awakened and repentant mind is to- 
ward the good, while the law of sin in the nature 
rebels against the law of conviction and repent- 
ance, and conquers us, bringing us into subjec- 
tion to the "law of sin which is in our members." 

In utter despair of ever overcoming this sin- 
56 



The Moral Universe. 

ful nature, the apostle exclaims, and his excla- 
mation is the despairing cry of humanity, "0 
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ?" 

Ovid, the Eoman poet, has said in similar 
strain : 

"I see the right, and I approve it too, 

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue." 

What was said by the poet in the following 
lines of another matter does not inaptly describe 
the helplessness of an awakened nature seeking 
fruitlessly to free itself from itself : 

"Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ; 
And in the lowest deep a lower deep, 
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, 
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." 

What converted man has not at some time 
had a mortal combat with sin that even such lan- 
guage does not exaggerate ? Perhaps he has had 
it often, until prostrate from trying he has 
ceased trying and trusted. 

This, I say, is the struggle of a soul that 
wants to do right. 

If one does not want to do right he will have 
no struggle. One who is willing to be led by the 
57 



The Moral Universe. 

Evil One as he wills, will, of course, have no 
fight with wrong. There can only be moral 
conflict where one is fighting against the inclina- 
tions of a sinful nature. 

But even such a one cannot conquer his na- 
ture alone. 

There is a way, however, by which he can. "I 
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

Here is victory over depravity ; here is deliver- 
ance from the corpse of a sinful nature ; here is 
triumph over the law of sin in our members. 

"Who shall deliver me ?" Christ will deliver. 

How will he deliver? By the washing of 
regeneration, by the new birth, by sanctifieation 
of the Holy Ghost. Yes, even entire sanctifiea- 
tion is for him who believes in Jesus — complete 
emancipation from the bondage of a sinful na- 
ture, so that perfect faith, perfect love, perfect 
purity, perfect consecration reign supreme in 
the spirit and life. 

Such is the mighty help God gives us through 
his Son in our helpless human sinfulness. 

2. We live in a sinful environment. 

We contend not only with the flesh, but with 
the world. We live and associate with all 
manner of bad people, the unjust, the unclean, 

58 



The Moral Universe. 

the "unbelieving. This is not easy if we wish to 
be just, clean, and full of faith. 

If we could always be with the good a right- 
eous life would be made easier. 

And yet it is possible for us to be pure in an 
impure world, to be holy in the midst of filth, as 
the swan can swim in a sewer and not have its 
white plumage defiled. 

Indeed, Christ prayed for this for his follow- 
ers. "I pray not that thou shouldest take them 
out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep 
them from the evil/' not that thou shouldest 
take them away from temptation, not that thou 
shouldest destroy the devil, but that thou should- 
est keep them in temptation, that thou shouldest 
give them victory over the devil. 

It is an old remark that there may be inno- 
cence, but no virtue without temptation. "If ye 
love them which love you, what reward have ye ?, 
do not even the publicans so ?" An unfriendly 
environment both develops virtue and merits re- 
ward ; but "who is sufficient for these things ?" 

Our adverse environment includes the evil 
agency of bad spirits. "For we wrestle not 
against flesh and blood, but against principal- 
ities, against powers, against the rulers of the 
59 



The Moral Universe. 

darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness [spiritual hosts of wickedness] in high 
places." 

By what authority can anyone say that evil 
spirits may not be about us and tempt us as 
good spirits "minister" to us? 

Our weakness is in our surroundings, but 
Christ can make us triumph. There is much 
in the world to cause us to sin, but there is more 
in grace to cause us to conquer. Christ con- 
quered in a sinful environment, and he will 
enable all who trust in him to conquer also. 
"Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in 
the world." 

3. We live in an environment of trial and 
suffering. 

Many, who would like to do good and live 
righteously, are made to stumble through trou- 
ble, through bereavement, through affliction. 

Perhaps we sin as easily through suffering as 
through temptation. In trouble we murmur, 
we doubt, we deny. In sorrow we become dis- 
couraged and surrender. 

This is a condition of things we have often 
met and been defeated by. 

Is there any way then by which we can live 
60 



The Moral Universe. 

righteously in our sufferings? The answer is 
"Yes/' and the way is the same — through 
Christ. 

What assurances of victory over trouble there 
are in the Bible for the Christian ! "Who shall 
separate us from the love of Christ [Christ's 
love for us] ? shall tribulation, or distress, or 
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, 
or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are 
more than conquerors through him that loved us. 
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

This is the unfailing word of Scripture 
everywhere. "And they shall never perish, 
neither shall any man pluck them out of my 
hand." 

A train is headed toward one destination. A 
switchman turns the switch at a certain place in 
the road and the train arrives in a very different 
city from the one it would have reached had it 
gone on its way without the switchman's inter- 
vention. 

61 



The Moral Universe. 

God is a switchman who turns a switch in our 
lives often, if needed, and keeps us, while we 
trust him, headed toward the eternal city. 

Five distinct times does the writer know of 
in his life when, in his extremity, God's hand 
reached down and turned the switch in his 
affairs and "saved him out of all his troubles." 

A minister of the Gospel was at one period of 
his life discouraged and in doubt of almost 
everything, even his divine ambassadorship. He 
had decided to leave his work and begin his 
vocational life anew. At the mid-week prayer 
meeting just preceding the day of formal de- 
cision, a young man, who knew nothing what- 
ever of the preacher's intentions, prayed this 
significant prayer : "Lord, bless our pastor, and, 
having put his hand to the plow, may he not 
look back/' Under the circumstances, what to 
the young man certainly had no special signifi- 
cance was most startling to the despondent min- 
ister. With other things of a like apparently 
providential import, it had not a little to do with 
his future fidelity to his divine commission. It 
seemed like the hand of God turning the switch 
in his servant's career and causing the future to 
appear plain to him. 

62 



The Moral Universe. 

" Only a little thing, you say, 

That guides the ship's wide going ; 

Only a little thing one -day 

May turn the tide of your doing." 

Moreover, these very troubles which over- 
throw ns when out of Christ's hand minister to 
us when we love him. 

"All things work together for good to them 
that love God." 

We are made perfect, as was Christ himself, 
through suffering. We enter heaven through 
"great tribulation." 

The poet Milton, speaking of his own blind- 
ness, says : 

"On my bended knee 
I recognize Thy purpose clearly shown : 

My vision thou hast dimmed, that I may see 
Thyself — thyself alone." 

The taking away of the poet's natural vision 
increased his spiritual vision. 

There is a story that tells of a man who went 
on a journey, and was overtaken by a wolf, 
which killed his horse, but, in killing the horse, 
the wolf became entangled in the harness, and 
carried the man to the end of his journey more 
quickly than the horse could have done. 

Our troubles are wolves that devour our in- 
63 



The Moral Universe. 

terests often, but they do better for us, if we are 
in Christ, than those things they take from us. 
The devil himself is a minister of good to 
him who loves and trusts the Saviour. He did 
Christ no harm in his temptation, and sifted or 
winnowed Peter, separating much of the chaff 
from the wheat in his character. 



"Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! 

Be our joys three parts pain, 

Strive, nor hold cheap the strain ; 

Learn, nor account 'the pang ; dare, never grudge the 

throe ; 
For thence — a parados, 
Which comforts while it mocks — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail." 



There is only one condition of all this divine 
deliverance — namely, letting God have his way 
with us and in us. 

When I was a boy I once had a pigeon that 
had a broken wing. I tried faithfully to so fix 
that wing that it would properly heal. But the 
pigeon did not understand, and would not let 
me do as I purposed to do, and when I thought 
I had the wing properly fixed in rude splints the 
64 



I 



The Moral Universe. 

poor creature foolishly broke away from what 
evidently seemed needless restraint to it. 

Are we not like that pigeon? Are we not 
afraid of God? and do we not fight against 
him? 

Keep yourself in God's hands and he will save 
you — save you from a sinful nature, from a 
sinful environment, from all trouble and sorrow 
and tribulation. 

He will give you complete victory, and crown 
you at last in glory. 

Humanity is sometimes compared to a fallen 
vine. It once clung to the trellis, was a thing 
of beauty, and bore fruit. Now it lies prone 
upon the ground, is trampled upon, and is fruit- 
less. Again it can be placed upon the trellis 
and made to bear fruit, to the delight of God 
and man. 

Christ is our Trellis ; by faith we cling to him, 
by faith in him we overcome the world and all 
its sin and suffering. 

Reader, accept this divine help in your own 
weakness. Let God save you; he is anxious to 
do it, can do it, and will do it. 

The victory that overcometh the world is our 
faith in Christ. 

(5) 65 



The Moral Universe. 

"By faith we know thee strong to save ; 

Save us, a present Saviour thou : 
Whate'er we hope, by faith we have ; 

Future and past subsisting now. 

"To him that in thy name believes, 

Eternal life with thee is given ; 
Into himself he all receives, 

Pardon, and holiness, and heaven." 

We must not overlook the fact that the Holy 
Spirit is the blessed agent and coefficient of this 
redeeming work among men. He regenerates 
and sanctifies us and "helpeth our infirmities." 
He is our ever-present Comforter" (Helper). 
He is among the "all things" of the text "freely" 
given to us. It is through him that we triumph. 

"Holy Spirit, Fount of blessing, 

Ever watchful, ever kind, 
Thy celestial aid possessing, 

Prisoned souls deliverance find 
Seal of truth, and Bond of union, 

Source of light, and Flame of love, 
Symbol of divine communion, 

In the olive-bearing dove; 

"Heavenly Guide from paths of error, 
Comforter of minds distressed, 

When the billows fill with terror, 

Pointing to an ark of rest ; 

66 



The Moral Universe. 

Promised Pledge, eternal Spirit, 
Greater than all gifts below, 

May our hearts thy grace inherit ; 
May our lips thy glories show !" 

Subordinately, angels are "ministering spir- 
its, sent forth to minister for them who shall 
be heirs of salvation." "He shall give his angels 
charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. 
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou 
dash thy foot against a stone." 

Who shall tell how much these heavenly vis- 
itants to our earth help those to whom they are 
commissioned ? 

Departed saints and friends are among the 
angels, and, in some instances, these glorified 
mortals are called angels. When John fell down 
at the feet of the angel in his visions on Patmos, 
to worship him, he was told: "See thou do it 
not: for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy 
brethren the prophets, and of them which keep 
the sayings of this book : worship God." 

Why not believe the departed loved are among 
the ministering angels? 

"Sweet souls around us! watch us still, 

Press nearer to our side, 
Into our thoughts, into our prayers, 

With gentle helpings glide." 
67 



The Moral Universe. 

'"Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven* 
They drop earth's affection, conceive not of woe? 

1 think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven 
Through that Love and Sorrow which reconciled so 
The Above and Below." 



There is nothing at all incredible in the 
thought of angelic ministrations. Spirits in the 
flesh help us: why may not spirits out of the 
flesh? 

When one considers the usual and well-known 
powers of the mind, and reflects on its hypnotic 
and telepathic powers, who shall undertake to 
determine the "metes and bounds" of spirit 
possibility ? 

Hundreds of authentic cases of telepathic 
communication are scientifically attested, some 
being made at a distance of thousands of miles. 

"The action of one mind upon another at a 
distance, the transmission of thought, mental 
suggestion, communication at a distance, all 
these are not more extraordinary than the action 
of the magnet on iron, the influence of the moon 
on the sea, the transportation of the human 
voice by electricity, the revelation of the chem- 
ical constituents of a star by the analysis of its 
light, or, indeed, all the wonders of contem- 
68 



The Moral Universe. 

porary science. Only these psychic transmis- 
sions are of a more elevated kind." 

"Star to star vibrates light ; may soul to soul 
Strike through some finer element of her own?" 

The Holy Spirit, also, has other agencies for 
our deliverance. 

We are hoth regenerated and sanctified medi- 
ately through the Bible. St. Peter tells us we 
are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
incorruptible, by the word of God/' and Christ 
prayed, "Sanctify them through [in] thy truth : 
thy word is truth." 

JSTo doubt all nature and all appointed agen- 
cies — as human and Christian fellowship, the 
sacraments and service of the Church, good 
reading, prayer, and meditation — are media of 
the Spirit's grace. 



He who thus walks is armed cap-a-pie against 
all sin, all temptation, all trial. 

We break the connection, we take the trolley 
off, we allow our locks of strength to be shorn 
off, and we become "weak" and "as another 
man." 

Our source of strength is God, not ourselves. 
69 



IV. 

Our Finished Salvation, or the Con- 
summation of Life. 



What am I? Only a ray into darkness fading away, 
Gleaming, beaming, brightly shining, 
Dimming, fading, fast declining, 
Now into the blackest night, 
Hast'ning on this ray of light? 
— From verses written oy the author in 1879. 

"Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove ; 

"Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just." 

— Tennyson. 

"Life! we've been long together, 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear — 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
Then steal away, give little warning, 
Choose thine own time ; 
Say not 'Good night,' but in some brighter clime 
Bid me 'Good morning.' " — Mrs. Barlauld. 
73 



"Mysterious night ! when our first parent knew 

Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 

Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 

This glorious canopy of light and blue? 

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 

Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 

And lo ! creation widened in man's view. 

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 

Within thy beams, O sun ! or who could find, 

Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, 

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ! 

Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? 

If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life." 

— Blanco White. 

"I look to see science prove immortality."— Kate 
Field. 

"If I say that the immortality of the soul, already 
demonstrated by philosophy, will be speedily proved by 
psychic sciences, more than one skeptic will smile at 
my assertion." — Gamille Flammarion. 

"There is no death ! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore, 

And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 
They shine forever more." 

— Edward Bulwer Lytton. 

"There is an eternal blessedness through the trans- 
figuring consummation of nature, of individuals, and of 
the kingdom of God." — Dorner. 

"The Scriptures serve to set the joy of heaven before 
us so as powerfully to allure, but not so as to satisfy 
curiosity." — 8. J. Hunter. 

74 



The Moral Universe. 



IV. 

Out Finished Salvation, ot the Consummation 
of Life* 

"Whom he justified, them he also glorified." — Rom. 
viii, 30. 

The immortality of the soul has long been 
believed on the ground of philosophy and the 
Scriptures. In these days it seems destined to 
be demonstrated by science. 

Unless all signs fail, the psychic sciences will 
one day prove, not only that the soul is a sepa- 
rate entity from the body, but that it survives 
the body's dissolution. 

In connection with this, the scientific investi- 
gation of Spiritualism may throw light upon the 
problem of our future existence. At least the 
ordinary explanation of many of the phenomena 
of this class is far from satisfactory. 

Evolution already throws new and added light 
upon the problem. How little likely does it 
seem that God would take infinite pains and 
time to create the soul of man only to let it fall 
into nothingness again after a few brief years of 
75 



The Moral Universe. 

mortal existence on the earth ? The 920ns of the 
soul's evolution, and the infinite patience in the 
steps by which God made the soul through evo- 
lution, testify to its immortal nature in the 
design of a wise and good Creator. 

Nature has always furnished analogies inti- 
mating the soul's indestructibility, and these 
have often been dwelt upon, notably by Bishop 
Butler in his immortal Analogy. Matter is in- 
destructible. It is never destroyed or annihi- 
lated, but only changed. It may be asked if per- 
sonality (nature's higher form of reality) is an 
exception, and is to perish in the body's dissolu- 
tion ? There is reason to think the tiniest life on 
the globe — even that of the animaleulse, millions 
of which are said to inhabit a drop of water — 
will never perish. 

The theme never loses its charm, and the 
bursting of the flower from the seed, the beau- 
tiful butterfly from the chrysalis, the bird from 
the shell, and a thousand other things, suggest 
at least the possibility of the soul's survival of 
death in a higher form of life. 

The soul's longing after immortality" and 
its "inward horror of falling into naught" also 
suggest its immortal destiny. It is the soul's in- 
76 



The Moral Universe. 

stinet of survival which turns toward eternity, 
as the instinct of the bee guides it to the flower, 
or the instinct of the bird guides it to its South- 
ern home though the journey has never been 
made before. 

Upon the basis of the soul's immortality are 
all of the promises of heaven contained in the 
Bible. 

What a world of meaning lies in the single 
phrase of the divine word that I use as a text ? 
. In and between those two words "justified" 
and "glorified" lies everything in man's salva- 
tion, his forgiveness, his regeneration, his sanc- 
tification, his adoption into the divine family, 
his ultimate triumph over death, and his corona- 
tion in heaven. 

Indeed, the apostle goes back into past eter- 
nity, and forward into the future eternity, 
and shows us that our salvation is from God 
in its beginning and in its ending. "Whom 
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be 
conformed to the image of his Son. . . . More- 
over, whom he did predestinate, them he also 
called: and whom he called, them he also 
justified: and whom he justified, them he also 
glorified." 

77 



The Moeal Universe. 

God foreknew, predestinated, and calls, con- 
ditionally, all who will repent and accept Christ 
as their Saviour, and for a complete and a com- 
pleted salvation. 

This he will accomplish for all who will let 
him. 

In this word "glorified" is expressed the com- 
pletion of salvation, or the consummation of the 
Christian life. 

Let us see what the word involves. 

1. It involves moral and spiritual perfection. 

Indeed, moral and spiritual perfection must 
come to us before we enter heaven. Nothing 
unholy ever enters in through the gates of pearl 
into that holy city. All that is unclean is and 
must he left outside, as all that are unholy at 
death are cast into hell. 

We need not wait till death to he made holy, 
we can he made holy now; but, if not before, 
we must be made holy at death, in order to enter 
heaven. Our glorified life is a life without 
moral or spiritual defect or infirmity. Heaven 
is a state of Christian perfection. 

"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and 
body be preserved blameless [entire, without 
blame] unto [at] the coming of our Lord Jesus 
78 



The Moral Universe. 

Christ. " "Now unto him that is able to keep 
you from falling, and to present you faultless 
before the presence of his glory with exceeding 
joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory 
and majesty, dominion and power, both now and 
ever." 

2. Our "glorified" state involves perfection 
of knowledge. 

I do not mean to say that we will not grow 
in knowledge or increase our knowledge in 
heaven : this we certainly will do, and will for- 
ever learn of God and his ways ; but in a certain 
and true sense our knowledge will be perfect 
when we enter heaven. 

"For now we see through a glass, darkly [or 
in a mirror, obscurely] ; but then face to face 
[plainly] : now I know in part ; but then shall I 
know even as also I am known." 

Human knowledge may increase in heaven, 
but our knowledge when we enter heaven will be 
purged of its earthly dross and imperfection; 
unmixed with human mistake or error. 

A large element that enters into the joy of 
this life is the pursuit and discovery of knowl- 
edge — knowledge of the new, and intensified 
knowledge of the old. 

79 



The Moral Universe. 

When Archimedes stepped into the bath, and, 
observing the overflow of the water as he did so, 
discovered the method of detecting the alloy in 
the crown of his master without destroying the 
crown, he exclaimed in great rapture, "Eureka 
— I have found it !" 

What word or language would express the 
multiplied joy that has filled the hearts of men 
as from time to time they have had the secrets 
of nature revealed to them ? Who will tell the 
feeling of Newton when he discovered the law 
of gravitation? of Columbus when he discovered 
the New World ? of Fulton when he discovered 
the method of the application of steam to navi- 
gation ? of Morse when he discovered the electric 
telegraph? of Edison when he discovered the 
telephone? or of Darwin, and Wallace, and 
Spencer, and a multitude of others as they have 
discovered the laws of evolution? 

And who can tell the joy that comes to us all 
as, in lower spheres, new vistas of truth and 
thought open on our vision ? 

If the joy of earthly knowledge and discovery 
be so great what must the larger knowledge and 
truth of heaven afford ? 

The completest range of earthly knowledge 
80 



The Moral Universe. 

and vision is but the alphabet of eternal knowl- 
edge. 

There are wonders and beauties in the nat- 
ural world that do not appear to our unaided 
vision on the earth. 

For instance, the planet Saturn has eight 
moons, and it is said : "The magnificence of the 
scenery upon this planet must surpass anything 
with which we are familiar. The rings form 
an immense arch, which spans the sky and sheds 
a soft radiance around; while, to add to the 
strange beauty of the night, eight moons in all 
their different phases — full, new, crescent, or 
gibbous — light up the starry vault." 

The world is beautiful, and yet there are beau- 
ties of which we know that surpass the beauty of 
this world! What glories will the immortal 
vision reveal to us ! 

Will there be roses in heaven ? There will be 
beauty there, and fragrance too, and things, per- 
haps, not yet revealed to our quintet of earthly 
senses. 

3. Our "glorified" state is a state of perfect 
happiness. Here sorrow abides even in the most 
perfect Christian life. 

Even Christ, who was always morally perfect, 
(6) 81 



The Moral Universe. 

was a "man of sorrows" — sorrows, no doubt, due 
to the sin of others, but, nevertheless, sorrows. 

Our sorrows, likewise, may be due to sin, but 
they remain through all our earthly preparation 
for heaven. 

They are made to serve the Christian life and 
are ministers of good to those who serve God, 
and yet they are sorrows. Life is full of tears. 

We have the promise, however, that there will 
be no sorrow in heaven. In that perfect state 
all this will be done away. "And God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be 
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain: for the 
former things are passed away." 

This is millennial language, but the earthly 
millennium is a type of heaven, as the Jewish 
dispensation was a type of the Christian; and 
the language is a literal description in heaven of 
what can only be figuratively true of the highest 
condition of the kingdom of Christ on earth. 

The psychological possibility of such a state 
it may be difficult to grasp, and yet it is not in- 
conceivable. When it is remembered that our 
unhappiness on earth is due to our sins and cir- 
cumstances, a condition in heaven like to certain 
82 



The Moral Universe. 

rare moments here seems a glorious and unin- 
terrupted possibility. 

There will, most likely, be shades and lights 
in our life in heaven. Eternal bliss will not be 
an eternal stare. 

There will be mountain peak and valley ex- 
periences, but the lowest level of experience will 
be above the "vale of tears." 

4. Our "glorified" state involves a perfect 
service. 

In heaven we will certainly serve. "And his 
servants shall serve him." 

To the servant whose pound gained ten 
pounds, Christ, in the parable, says, "Have thou 
authority over ten cities," and to him whose 
pound gained five pounds he says, "Have thou 
authority over five cities." 

As in these instances, so in all the intimations 
of heaven in the. Scriptures, the thought of 
heaven as a place of service is brought before us. 

But our service there will be perfect, as here 
it is imperfect. 

Our service in heaven will be perfect in the 

sense that every man will be in his right place, 

or in his niche. Here men are not always fitted 

to their sphere. Hence we are not as happy as 

S3 



The Moral Universe. 

we might be. In heaven it will be otherwise, 
and all work will be a pleasure. 

The drudgery of labor will not be a part of 
our heavenly service. Labor will be normal and 
a delight. 

5. Our "glorified" state includes perfect wor- 
ship. 

Yes, we will worship in heaven. Perhaps 
there will be heavenly preaching ; why not ? 

The angels sing, and we will sing. We will 
sing the "song of Moses and the Lamb" — a song 
of redemption, a song of triumph. 

I doubt not the song of our triumph will en- 
gage the perfected talent of poet and musician 
there, and all will love to sing of our Eedeemer. 

6. In our "glorified" state we will live in a per- 
fect environment. 

"There the wicked cease from troubling and 
the weary are at rest." 

0, what delight will this be ! Our companion- 
ships all holy, our associations all holy, no sin 
and no sorrow there ! 

There will we meet our friends and dear ones, 
whom we parted with in their weakness, in 
strength and joy. 

How different they will appear to us ! And 
84 



The Moral TJnivebse. 

yet we will know them. They helped us here; 
they will he able to help us more there. 

0, what blessed fellowship will be ours in that 
perfect home ! 

"Over the river they beckon to me — 

"Loved ones who have crossed to the farther side ; 
The gleam of their snowy robes I see, 

But their voices are drowned in the rushing tide. 

"I shall know the loved who have gone before, 
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, 

When over the river, the peaceful river, 
The angel of Death shall carry me." 

7. Our "glorified" state involves a perfect 
body. 

Our bodies are full of infirmities here; they 
will be full of strength there. 

"It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in- 
corruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised 
in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in 
power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a 
spiritual body." 

There will be no sickness in heaven, there will 
be no pain, no death. 

"'Twas sown in weakness here; 

'Twill then be raised in power : 
That which was sown an earthly seed 

Shall rise a heavenly flower." 
85 



The Moral Universe. 

The difference in our bodies when sick and 
well is suggestive of a change that is possible in 
our resurrection. What a difference, for ex- 
ample, between our bodies when in fever and 
when in health ! Our healthiest condition here 
is as sickness compared to our "immortal" and 
"incorruptible" bodies. 

There are those who affect to despise the body 
and pretend to think little of our future bodily 
life. 

Such certainly miss the revealed significance 
of this part of our manifold nature. It is far 
from certain that a disembodied condition is the 
highest condition for us. If so, why do we live 
in bodies now ? 

Besides, the New Testament doctrine of our 
bodily resurrection does not countenance the 
idea. The disembodied condition of our friends 
in heaven is, no doubt, better than our embodied 
condition here; but the consummation of life, 
according to the Scriptures, is not till the resur- 
rection. The reunion of a redeemed and per- 
fected spirit with a raised and "changed" body 
is our complete equipment of life for our eternal 
home. 

Just what will be the nature of the bodily life 
86 



The Moral Universe. 

in all particulars in heaven we are not told, nor 
may we guess. Will we have other senses ? It 
is not likely. 

The senses we possess, however, may be great- 
ly heightened in their capacity of enjoyment. 
Why not? They can be cultivated and refined 
and heightened here. 

Will our bodies need nourishment ? In Eden 
there was the "tree of life," and in the New 
Eden, which prefigures for us our heavenly 
home, there is another "tree of life," which bears 
"twelve manner of fruits." The resurrected 
Christ "ate" before his doubting disciples "a 
piece of a broiled fish," and also, probably, ate 
with them at the seashore. 

What, precisely, will be the food we will eat, 
supposing we will need food, we will not try to 
determine. Suffice it to say, it will be food 
adapted to our glorified condition, a new "man- 
na" fitted for our new life. 

Some of the functions of the bodily life will 
have passed away. Christ said: "They which 
are accounted worthy to obtain that world, and 
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry 
nor are given in marriage." 

Even in our present bodies we have remnants 
87 



The Moral Universe. 

of onee useful organs, now atrophied. The 
physiologist is familiar with many of these. 
They tell us the bygone history of the body's 
evolution, but serve no other useful purpose. 

So in heaven the higher functions of the body 
will predominate, and those functions that have 
no longer any use will remain, perhaps, as rem- 
nants of our lower existence, no longer func- 
tional, but atrophied, fossil remains of our 
resurrection. 

8. The companionship of our Saviour will be 
the crown of our glory. 

"And I shall see him face to face, 
And tell the story, Saved by grace." 

Blessed vision ! " Wonderful story of love !" 

" 'Forever with the Lord !' 

Amen, so let it be ! 
Life from the dead is in that word, 

'Tis immortality." 

This it is, and more, to be "glorified." 
We have suggestions of what heaven will be, 
but we know only in a measure. "It doth not 
yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that 
when he shall appear we shall be like him, for 
we shall see him as he is." 

LofC. 88 



The Moral Universe. 

"O glorious hour ! O blest abode ! 
I shall be near, and like my God ; 
And flesh and sin no more control 
The sacred pleasures of the soul." 

Heaven is the glorified continuity of the 
Christian life begun on earth. 

There is no break between this life and the 
other. We enter heaven on much the same level 
as we end our earthly career. Death is "transi- 
tion" only. It is a door out into the larger life, 
a bridge, a tunnel from the city terrestrial to 
the city celestial. 

Only in heaven there will be limitless growth 
and unfettered opportunity. 

Our life there will be physical, mental, and 
spiritual as it is here. 

The heavenly life is not only continuous, but 
contiguous. 

The extent of that blessed country we may not 
know: it may include the "stars," as some are 
prone to think ; but there can be no doubt that 
it is also about us. 

"It lies around us like a cloud — 

A world we do not see ; 
Yet the sweet closing of an eye 

May bring us there to be." 
89 



The Moral Universe. 

This is the unfailing impression we get from 
the Scriptures everywhere. 

How the angels, who are in heaven, crowd 
around the earthly life in both the old and the 
new dispensation! They appear to Abraham 
and Daniel and a host of others, and are the 
constant attendants of our Lord from the man- 
ger to the cross. 

In the twofold reference (Greek and Jewish) 
in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews (1-3) the 
apostle Paul evidently sanctions the view that 
the departed heroes of the faith are witnesses 
of our Christian race; interested and sympa- 
thetic spectators, ready to feel disappointed and 
chagrined at our failure, and ready joyfully to 
applaud our successes. 

This same apostle was once, according to his 
own testimony, caught up into heaven while in 
the body, and heard things that he was not per- 
mitted to tell us. 

John on Patmos saw visions that represented 
near realities. 

If one will read the Scriptures with the 
thought in view he will be surprised to note how 
much they contain giving us to feel that "heaven 
is not far away." 

90 



The Moral Universe. 

All the details and occupations of that life are 
not given to us. 

While it is well to know the future in a meas- 
ure, it is not well to know it too closely. Such 
a knowledge would undoubtedly unfit us for the 
duties and moral discipline of this life. 

Besides, could we look into the face of the sun 
and not be injured by the sight? No more 
might we know all of heaven with impunity to 
our present spiritual capacity. It is well that 
"now we know in part." We may be sure, how- 
ever, that our employment there will be blessed. 
This is enough.* 

Even in the crude hopes and desires of unin- 
spired humanity concerning heaven there is at 
least this truth : The soul will be satisfied. "I 
shall be satisfied when I awake with thy like- 
ness." 

When the Indian thinks of heaven as "a 
happy hunting ground," or the Esquimau thinks 
of it as a land of perpetual sun where there are 
plenty of walrus and fish, or the Buddhist thinks 
of it as Nirvana — "immovable rest" — or even 

♦Such books as Intra Muros, whatever view we may adopt 
to explain the strange experience of its author, serve to make 
us realize that heaven is more than an indefinite hope, or an 
endless continuity of nothings. 
91 



The Moral Universe. 

the Mohammedan thinks of it as a "harem," 
there is in such ideas an unconscious adumbra- 
tion of a state of fulfilled desires. 

The inspired Scriptures themselves picture 
heaven to us in somewhat the same manner, and 
their "jasper walls" and "golden streets" and 
"glassy sea" and "gates of pearl" and "tree of 
life" and "healing leaves" testify to the same 
blessed reality of complete fruition. 

Heaven is the perfection of moral human be- 
ings for a perfect society. 

God is righteous, and demands righteousness 
of all, he forgives the sinner who repents and 
believes in Jesus, regenerates, sanctifies, keeps, 
and glorifies those who will let him, and, while 
upholding his government by imperative laws of 
right, justifies or makes us right, and finally 
unites a perfected people in a perfected con- 
dition of holiness and happiness forever. 

Hence heaven is the final answer and outcome 
of God's righteous plan of redemption in the sal- 
vation of the sinful through the blood of the 
cross. 

"Hark, hark, my soul ! angelic songs are swelling 
O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore : 

How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling 
Of that new life when sin shall be no more !" 
92 



The Moral Universe. 

"The world is very evil, 

The times are waxing late : 
Be sober and keep vigil, 

The Judge is at the gate ; 
The Judge that comes in mercy, 

The Judge that comes with might, 
To terminate the evil, 

To diadem the right." 
93 



POSTSCRIPT. 

The reader has not failed to observe, from 
what has been said, that everything in our sal- 
vation is to be understood from the standpoint 
of necessary righteousness. 

So, likewise, everything in the condemnation 
of the sinful and the lost is to be understood 
from the same standpoint. Eighteousness is the 
great word of life and destiny. If we are not 
righteous, we must be made righteous, or we can 
never enter heaven. 

God's plan of salvation is to make us right- 
eous. Eeader, do not frustrate his righteous 
purpose in you ! 

95 



r... 



OCT 7 19011 



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